I’m working my way through some of the suggestions I’ve received from many folks. In particular, the “px” icon in the upper left to slide open the navigation and Table of Contents has been changed to a (hopefully) more familiar ‘hamburger’ icon. I’ll also be testing some other things in the coming weeks as time permits such as having a TOC show up by default in the right ⅓ of the page at the top.
Don’t expect it too soon as I want to focus on writing more content first. I’m aiming for a December-ish timeframe for a more official launch and want to make sure there is a decent amount of material for folks to consume.
I’ve pretty much finished up the first article mentioned in the previous post. There is still a long way to go.
As much as I’d like to believe that “If you build it, they will come”, the reality is that nobody is coming until there is something worth coming for. So I’m working hard on getting good content in place.
I’m also acutely aware that nobody will stay unless good content continues to be published, but that’s for another post.
Just a quick update on a couple of interesting things.
The first article is almost done being re-written and updated.
I added some functionality to the slide-out menu and am still thinking about the best icon to use.
I also had a nice epiphany when I realized that the styling I had already written to make big videos works great for images as well.
First things first. I forgot to actually link to the new About page in my last post. So here it is. As with all things related to the site, any feedback, comments, or criticisms are welcome!
Speaking of feedback, comments, and criticisms, I wanted to write about it for a moment.
First, I want to thank everyone who has taken the time to contact me and provide me feedback on the site. You have no idea how valuable it is to both as a motivator, and as a means to know when something is off. I appreciate and give my full attention to each and every person and idea thrown at me. Thank you!
I’ve started working a bit on the “About” page for the site. I wanted a place to highlight the mission statement I’m sort of working from:
To provide tutorials, workflows and a showcase for high-quality photography using Free/Open Source Software.
As well as a place to let users know who is behind the scenes working on the site. It’s mostly me at the moment, but I’ve managed to talk someone into helping me…
Yep, that’s right. I’ve managed to talk Rolf Steinort of Meet the GIMP fame into helping me out with the site. We’re still not 100% sure exactly what this means yet, but I have already been bouncing ideas off him for some of the site details anyway.
Sometimes I get into weird OCD mode where I need to have something for better or worse. One of those things was a desire to break out of the mold of standard blog-type posts in articles for this site. I’ve sometimes found images are relegated to second-class citizens on some page layouts that don’t do them justice.
I couldn’t let that happen here. The problem was that I needed to do some things to make sure the typographic layouts were visually strong as well. This meant a adding control to width and layout of main text elements, with the downside of having to hack a bit to make images large.
It took a bit of digging and wrestling to get there, but a couple of nights ago I also managed to get an RSS feed working for the blog posts on the site. Honestly, I spent more time fiddling with dates in javascript than I should have.
I had to make some minor modifications this morning to accommodate where the location should be, but it should be live now.
The location is: http://pixls.us/blog/feed.xml.
Both the blog index pages and post pages contain a <link> element that point to it, so most readers should find the feed if you point it at a page.
I’ll test it later, but the most important thing is the location is correct regardless of whatever hacking I do to the feed itself later.
So, I’ve had the idea in my head for a while that it would be nice to get the navigation out of the way. When I’m reading an article or tutorial, I don’t want to be inundated with elements that aren’t pertinent to what I’m reading. I want to focus on the content.
For the curious, and to serve as an introduction, I thought I’d make a few notes about how this site is built and what I’m currently obsessing over. Hopefully this can help define what I’m up to in case anyone wants to jump in and help out.
The entire point of this site, its “mission statement” if you will, is:
To provide tutorials, workflows and a showcase for high-quality photography using Free/Open Source Software.
Subject to revisions, of course, but mostly sums up what I’d like to accomplish here. I also think it’s good to have this documented somewhere to remind me. :)
Well, technically this isn’t the first post on the site. I had actually started with building out the temporary Coming Soon page. Then I shifted focus on styling the main content page for the site (articles). After a bit I realized that I should probably be working on some sort of blog posts as a means for folks to keep up with what I’m doing.
So, here we are!
I’m Pat David.
I’m an occasional photographer and I dabble in digital artwork occasionally as the mood strikes me. I also happen to be a fan of free software. Those two worlds collide fairly often, and lately I’ve been having a great time writing about them.
I’ve been writing tutorials on my blog as well as trying to modernize/update tutorials on the GIMP website. You could call me a (small) part of the GIMP team (but I’m trying to do more!). I also try to help out where I can on other F/OSS projects as well (G’MIC is another place you’ll find me bumming around). I do these things because I think it’s important to try and give back to the community in whatever way you’re capable of.
I’m loud. So I figured I could use that capability to help out.
(It’s my demented super-power).
Free/Open Source Photography
Unless otherwise noted content on this site, PIXLS.US by Pat David, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.